At the dedication of the Clinton library last week in Little Rock, Karl Rove and President Bush received separate tours of the dramatic building, a glistening silver, suspended boxcar filled with light and with a panoramic view of the Arkansas river. Flung across the river stands an old railroad bridge - and to Clinton watchers, bridges represent "the bridge to the 21st century", the former president's re-election slogan in 1996.

The opening ceremony was biblical in its spectacle, length and rain. For more than four hours we huddled in thin ponchos under the downpour, awaiting four presidents. For the Democrats among us - former advisers and cabinet secretaries, celebrity supporters and high school friends of Bill - this was an unofficial convention, a kind of counter-inaugural, with rueful discussions of the recent defeat.

John Kerry arrived to defiant cheering from the crowd. Then, when the presidents were announced, Bush tried to push his way past Clinton at the library door to be first in line, against the already accepted protocol for the event, as though the walk to the platform was a contest for alpha male. In his speech, Clinton sought to clarify the present by his broad analysis of globalisation - "an age of interdependence with new possibilities and new dangers" - and the offer of conciliation: "America has two great dominant strands of political thought; we're represented up here on this stage: conservatism, which at its very best draws lines that should not be crossed; and progressivism, which at its very best breaks down barriers that are no longer needed or should never have been erected in the first place."

In his effort to transcend the division of America into two nations, red and blue, Clinton was attempting to demonstrate his tradition - the absence of dogma, the belief that good ideas can come from anywhere, and that solutions cannot be imposed but must be worked out in democratic politics, involving the arts of building coalitions, compromises and experimentation, of which he was the leading practitioner and survivor.

Offstage, beforehand, Rove and Bush had had their library tours. According to two eyewitnesses, Rove had shown keen interest in everything he saw, and asked questions, including about costs, obviously thinking about a future George W Bush library and legacy. "You're not such a scary guy," joked his guide. "Yes, I am," Rove replied. Walking away, he muttered deliberately and loudly: "I change constitutions, I put churches in schools ..." Thus he identified himself as more than the ruthless campaign tactician; he was also the invisible hand of power, pervasive and expansive, designing to alter the fundamental American compact.

Bush appeared distracted, and glanced repeatedly at his watch. When he stopped to gaze at the river, where secret service agents were stationed in boats, the guide said: "Usually, you might see some bass fishermen out there." Bush replied: "A submarine could take this place out."

Was the president warning of an al-Qaida submarine, sneaking undetected up the Mississippi, through the locks and dams of the Arkansas river, surfacing under the bridge to the 21st century to dispatch the Clinton library? Is that where Osama bin Laden is hiding?

Or was this a wishful paranoid fantasy of ubiquitous terrorism destroying Clinton's legacy with one blow? Or a projection of menace and messianism, with only Bush grasping the true danger, standing between submerged threat and civilisation? Perhaps it was simply his way of saying he wouldn't build his library near water.

Clinton concluded his remarks with a challenge to Bush couched in terms of his own failure - "where we fell short ... the biggest disappointment in the world to me ... peace in the Middle East ... I did all I could." He then faced Bush: "But when we had seven years of progress toward peace, there was one whole year when, for the first time in the history of the state of Israel, not one person died of a terrorist attack, when the Palestinians began to believe they could have a shared future. And so, Mr President, again, I say: I hope you get to cross over into the promised land of Middle East peace. We have a good opportunity, and we are all praying for you."

At the private luncheon afterwards, in a heated tent pitched behind the library, Shimon Peres delivered a heartfelt toast to Clinton's perseverance in pursuing the Middle East peace process. Upon entering the tent, Bush, according to an eyewitness, told an aide: "One gulp and we're out of here." He had informed the Clintons he would stay through the lunch, but by the time Peres arose with wine glass in hand the president was gone.

·Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is Washington bureau chief of salon.com